Hey, been a while since I've written anything like this huh! With Sun and Moon around the corner, I wanted to write up a post about some general "quality of life" ideas I had a while back regarding new users and how accessible the site is to them. Major releases like the ones coming typically bring about tons of traffic to the site, so I wanted to provide some suggestions that I think will help make PokeBase most convenient to use for these new users.
My proposals on this thread derive directly from what I've seen newer users say about our current points system and moderation process over the years. Hopefully, what's mentioned here will help improve people's experience on the site without opening things up for misuse, and won't be labourious from a programming perspective. These ideas are pretty substantial and would change a lot on the site, so I definitely welcome criticism and discussion about them. The current system isn't bad by any means, but I think it can be improved still and I'd like to discuss it. So, I wrote this.
(I know this will end up very long, so I'll put my key points in bold if you just want to skim it. I do encourage that you read the full thing if you want to talk about these suggestions though.)
Make basic privileges more accessible
In the current system, new users who sign up to the site start off only with the most basic abilities: to ask and answer questions, and to add comments. In the past, voting and wall posting privileges were available from the moment an account was created -- these are features we've removed, due to the former being used to spam vote and the latter being used as an avenue to post spam. Obviously, we have to apply some limitation on these privileges to prevent their misuse, but I think the current point prerequisite of 30 for these abilities is a bit higher than necessary. More to the point, I think it would be beneficial to decrease the point requirement for upvoting and wall posting to 22. This would make both of them accessible by selecting an answer to a single question, which is the key point here -- in most cases, reaching will 30 require that someone votes a user's post, which could take some time if people aren't feeling generous.
Wall posts in particular are something that I think should absolutely become more accessible. The 30 point requirement, as easy as it is to attain, is of notable inconvenience to new users. There have been some good ideas to improve walls made by others in the past like this one, this one and this one, but I understand that not everything can be added immediately due to the time they require to implement. So I think setting the number to 22 would be a good workaround and would help people gain this ability more easily. Spammers are not a concern, posting questions is easier and more efficient on their end anyway. (I also want to mention here that giving mods the ability to delete or edit any wall post would remove the need for any sort of point requirement, as we could manually clear any spam that comes about. If this is at all possible to add, it would be fantastic for this and as a general measure to remove inappropriate content.)
In the case of upvotes, I see this as a very basic privilege that is also made a bit harder to gain than necessary. Decreasing the requirement to 22 help new users access to ability quickly, and should also increase the circulation of upvotes which has been low for years. This could make it easier to use a second account to spam vote the main one since getting the ability to vote on the main account would be a bit easier, but I don't think this is an issue since instances of this have been very low and we can punish people for it easily.
It'd also be great if extra privileges could transfer across to other sections once they're earned in one, though I understand the possible technical difficulty and time commitment of implementing this.
Repurpose the moderation system in the admin
The admin section has had me thinking for some time now. Managing it is probably the largest task we have staff members, and probably the biggest inconvenience and deterrent for new users to the site. I feel that this alone warrants a change of some sort. I think the admin is necessary in a lots of ways, but it a lot of others it isn't, and so what I'm suggesting is what I think would balance it out nicely and make it less difficult on both ends. Put simply, what I'm suggesting is that all posts, except answers and comments added to questions over a day old, should skip the admin process. Essentially, this repurposes the admin as a filter for new posts on old questions that usually aren't helpful -- everything else goes through immediately. If possible, unanswered questions should also be made exempt from this; any posts added to them should go through unchecked.
This is a pretty big change, but I think it would make the site so much more accessible, convenient and immediate than it is now for new users, and also takes a load off us as staff members. Perhaps are less helpful changes involved with it too -- we'll likely end up with some questions on the site that break rules, and we won't have a direct spam filter any more -- but I still think this would be for the better. We have a good flagging system in place to deal with bad posts and spam ads anyway, so as long as people remember to flag the posts that break rules, I don't think it would present much of an issue if we were to hide posts the traditional way. Bigger communities like Smogon get away without approval systems like the one we have now, even though they're better targets for spam -- I think we could have the same, but keep the admin feature as one that is more efficient and less disruptive.
In my opinion, the best part about this potential change is that it targets the most frequent reasons why some posts are not approved: either they're an unhelpful addition to a post that is already resolved or they're a moveset post lacking basic detail. In both cases, the admin will hold them back from being shown immediately, and we can hide them there without them interrupting activity feeds. Most questions in the admin are approved, and the ones that aren't are clear violations of the rules (in-game teams and trade requests are most common) and will be taken down quickly -- again, I don't think the admin is necessary in these instances. Spam has been extremely uncommon recently (there's been none in months), and while we might end up a more attractive target after Sun and Moon release, our flagging system should work well to remove these, especially with the coming boost in activity. Answers that are added to new or unanswered posts are rare and almost never removed.
If this feature were to be added, we'd have to consider what point requirement we'd use for users to post without moderation on old questions. According to this, the current number is 200 points -- I think this is fair.
Add to the rules page
My final suggestions will be some additions to the rules page. The page does a good job covering everything, but there are a few details that I think could do with some elaboration.
Add an explicit rule about in-game teams. Basically, add this post as a global rule. As they stand, the rules only imply that these posts aren't allowed -- you'd have to intellectually consider that teams only go on the Battle Subway, then consider in-game teams and moveset rates aren't allowed there -- and even then it's not entirely clear. This is common knowledge among experienced users, but those new to the site might not fully understand it. A notice on the "general rules" section would do nicely I think.
Add an official rule about unhelpful comment necroposts and how they may be hidden. The rules do cover how answers shouldn't be repeats (and I honestly think this one should be brought to the top of the page given its prominence), but it never mentions comments like these that are uninformative, go off-topic and bump resolved questions. (The comments I linked are hidden by the way.)
Discourage abuse of the flagging and voting systems. If we'd like to prevent abuse of the site's points and flagging system, a notice should probably be made about it in the rules, as well as one that makes it clear duplicate accounts aren't welcome.
Add a rule about questions that aren't specific to Pokemon. Every once in a while we'll get questions like those that ask why a 3DS isn't reading a copy of Pokemon X or Y -- I tend to hide these, since they're questions about a potential defect in the 3DS and not inherently about Pokemon. As soon as we make exceptions we encounter issues, so if I'm correct in my treatment of such questions, I think this should be added to the rules.
Mention questions that could have answers that change as new games release. This is a subject I touched upon in this thread here -- I encouraged that updates to responses should be posted as comments on the existing answer. Again, if I'm correct in the way I handle these, I think it should added to the rules, specifically that we may convert answers like this into a comment.
Add detail about the admin system and how it works. Especially if the current system is to remain as it is, I think it is necessary to explain how the admin moderation process works in the rules page so that new users can be made aware of how it works from the getgo. There are numerous threads from users asking about this process, so I think it would save a lot of hassle if this was added to the rules page.
That's about it from me! Sorry if that ended up difficult to read. I'll be sure to add to this if I realise I forgot to mention something. Feel free to discuss this in the comments; let me know if you agree, disagree, etc.
A response from Pokemaster would be awesome :)
